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Sunday, 30 September 2012

Our most recent meeting of the South Lancashire Clandestine Cake club was our first in Preston city centre, in celebration of this event a theme of "Cake in the City" was chosen.. On a wild wet and windy night we arrived with our cakes at our lovely venue "Winckleys", a cute coffee shop in the historic centre of the city.

Our very talented bakers certainly rose to the challenge of the theme and the event was well attended considering we were competing with Great British Bake off on TV and the weather too, members old and new brought along fabulous creations of a pina colada cake, mojito cake, strawberry diaquiri cake, handbag cake, red velvet cake, "parkin" cake and a pear and ginger cake. We all had a fabulous time and were very impressed with Winckleys which most of us hadn't visited before.

Winckleys serves a great selections of beverages and refreshments and uses some great local suppliers like the Ginger Baker too. Please pay this local independent coffee shop a visit when you are in the city and you are sure of a warm "Winckleys" welcome.

South Lancs CCC enjoying the cake @ Winckleys

For the event I made a Strawberry Diaquiri cake, here's the recipe if you fancy having a go, interestingly enough all the cakes that where representing cocktails were rum based cocktails, I wonder what that says about our membership.

Strawberry cake

2 1/4 cups plain flour - sifted

pinch of salt

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of softened butter or quality margarine

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

2 large free range eggs

1 tsp vanilla paste

3/4 cups crushed fresh strawberries

Method

Pre heat oven to 180c / 170c fan

Grease and base line 2 x 8" round cake tins

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder onto a plate

In your mixer combine the butter(or marg), sugar, eggs and vanilla

Add the flour mix and strawberries in 2 halves to your mixer, mix until you have a well incorporated mixture

Scrape into the prepared tins and smooth the top

Bake for 25 -30 minutes until the cakes test as done with a skewer or cocktail stick

Cool in the tins, whilst still warm prick all over and pour over diaquiri syrup

Diaquiri syrup

50ml water

50ml white rum

juice and rind of 1 lime

50g sugar

Method

Heat the water and sugar to make a syrup, remove from heat and and lime juice and rind

When cool then add the rum

Cake filling

Sliced fresh strawberries

Quantity of whipped cream

Decoration

White chocolate dipped fresh strawberries

White chocolate shards with strawberry popping candy

You can find Winckleys just off Winckley Square at 12 Winckley St, Preston.

Thursday, 27 September 2012

The harvest from the garden is starting to slow but we are still battling a couple of gluts, mainly green beans (well actually purple beans as they are Blue Lake) and courgettes ( both yellow and the more traditional green), we still also have a pretty good selection of salad leaves growing too. Inspired by a recipe in River Cottage "Vegetables" this is a versatile lunch dish which has the comforting warmth of the beans and courgettes to lift it on these cooler days, the addition of cooked shredded chicken ups the protein content, but can easily be omitted if you require a vegetarian dish.

Inspired by the classic Greek dish Moussaka and also as a way to use up courgettes from the garden this recipe was born. Its a delicious easy family dish which is pimped by the addition of some delicious chutney I received to review from FATJAX chutneys, which delivers a fresher flavour layer to the base bolognaise sauce.

Ingredients

Low fat ground minced steak

Onion - finely chopped

Garlic

Mixed herbs

Beef stock and /or wine

Tinned tomatoes

Tomato puree

1/2 jar of FATJAX Mediterrean vegetable chutney.

Splash of balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

2 large courgettes, sliced using a potato peeler

Potatoes , sliced and parboiled

Milk

Butter

Flour

Parmesan cheese

Method

Fry off the onion in a little oil , then the garlic, then add the minced steak and cook until coloured

I have been really lucky to be given the opportunity to review some great local products from FATJAX Chutneys, who are literally a couple of miles down the road from me. Creating artisan cheeky chutneys, vinegars and ravishing relishes produced by chefs in small batches to capture freshness of flavour. FATJAX chutneys also make addition to savoury dishes where you are looking to add that extra dimension of flavour, check out the post for Courgettsakka.

So here goes, my delish samples (proper full sized jars mind you so I could have a good taste and share with friends too ),and its true what the say "The difference is in the taste".

Mediterranean Vegetable - A delightful vegetable chopped chutney, bit like ratatouille only nicer. I could see this being served as an alternative to a salsa or alongside fish, I think its would also make a great combo with tuna fish and mayo grilled as a toasty.

Onion and fennel seed - The outright favourite of everyone who has tried the chutneys, lovely with cheese of course and cooked meats too. A new flavour to the FATJAX stable and from the feedback I'll be giving hopefully a permanent addition to the range , its the contrasting aniseedy hum which combines superbly with the sweet onions that everyone loved.

Sweet Red Onion and chilli - an ideal partner to meats, cold or hot with a little bit of a kick ( don't worry not too much). My brother loves it on a bacon butty ! Also I think this would be delicious stirred into a chilli to provide extra flavour depth.

Bengali Pineapple - apparently FATJAX best seller by a mile, think mango chutney but fresher and pineapply (of course), delicious with curries and poppadoms, I can see this in filo pastry with shredded cooked chicken a little creme fraiche, hey presto chicken korma parcels !

The chutneys are available direct from FATJAX via their website or at one of the many local food markets they attend or in a number of carefully selected local food emporiums.

Thursday, 20 September 2012

I am getting involved in the Big Fair Bake - Fairtrade Baking Challenge, I think it great when you bake something that in a small way makes a difference to the world we live in. Baking with fairtrade ingredients is something that I do where every possible in my recipes, because supporting fairtrade means that you offer growers and workers all over the world a fair price for their produce or product and a better life long term.

Foodies100 is running a challenge to create a baking recipe using ingredients which are fairtrade which you cake bake and share with friends and collegues to raise awareness of Fairtrade.

As part of the Take a step campaign , you have a chance of winning a lovely Kitchenaid blender, all you need to do is visit the Fairtrade website and tell them who you are baking for ! Easy or what.

You can buy lots of baking ingredients that are fairtrade such as

Coffee

Sugar

Raisins

Cinnamon

Honey

Chocolate / Cocoa powder

Bananas

Apricots

Ginger

Brazil nuts

Tea

Vanilla

To name just a few, so next time you are out shopping if you have the choice buy fairtrade. Because this little tiny action makes a big life changing different to producer.

This is an easy recipe and is well liked in the Lancashire Food household , perfect for serving with a mug of fairtrade tea.

Ingredients

450ml strong freshly brewed coffee (fairtrade)

300g granulated sugar (fairtrade)

110g butter (vegetable margarine if you wish to make vegan version)

150g raisins (fairtrade)

1 tsp allspice

1 tsp ground cinnamon (fairtrade )

375g plain flour

2 tsp bicarb of soda

1 tsp baking powder

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180c/ 170c fan / Gas 4

Line a deep square cake tin approx 20 cm by 20cm

Sieve the flour, bicarb and baking powder into a bowl

In a large pan bring the coffee, sugar,butter, raisins and spices to the boil, allow to cool slighty

Mix the coffee mixture into the flour, stir until well mixed

Pour into your prepared tin

Bake for 45 -60 minutes, until tested cooked with a skewer

Cool in the tin

Decorate if you wish with melted chocolate or flavoured buttercream

The cake smells wonderful whilst cooking , a little like a cinnamon latte . As the recipe does not contain eggs it can easily be made vegan by substituting vegetable margarine for the butter. Pretty sure it would work well as gluten free too.

I have recently fallen in love with this ingredient (so much so its a regular now in the shopping basket)as its so versatile and can be used in so many ways, so here is a recipe from the Total website that I have tried in my own kitchen, created by nutrionist Martin MacDonald as a weightloss recipe.

Spicy Fishcakes with sweet potato wedges and yoghurt dip.

40g Total Greek Yoghurt (0%)

200g sweet potato, cut into chunky wedges

Olive oil - drizzle

Paprika spice mix

100g salmon

50g prawns

1/2tsp thai curry paste (panang paste)

Handful of fresh coriander leaves - chopped

Pinch of salt

25g green beans

160g mixed salad ( lettuce, cucumber, spinach, celery)

10g coconut oil

1/4 chilli

Freshly ground pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 375F / 190C / Gas mark 5

Place the wedges in a bowl, mix with salt, pepper and spice mix and place on a baking tray. Cook in the middle of the oven for approximately 45 minutes

Place the salmon, prawns , thai curry paste, coriander and a pinch of salt in a food processor and blend until a paste is formed. Add the beans and blend again. Turn out of the processor and place in a bowl.

Refrigerate for about 10 minutes

Prepare the salad on your plate

With cool hands shape your fish mixture into small patties

Heat a little oil in a frying pan and fry for approximately 10 minutes on each side over a low heat

Prepare the dip by mixing the copped coriander and chopped chilli with the greek yoghurt

Once the wedges have nicely crisped and the fish cakes ready, place on your serving plate with the yoghurt dip.

We really enjoyed this recipe, particularly the spicy fish cakes which were very easy to make and the lovely cooling yoghurt dip to offset the spices in the fish cake. The recipe is enough to serve 2 adults. If you tempered the chilli and thai red curry paste it would also be suitable for the whole family.

Total Greek Yoghurt supplied the ingredients for this blog post .Why not join in the fun and prepare a healthy meal, check out some great new recipes and take part in the treasure hunt !

Easy Tasty Clean is a new e book from Janice Cumberlidge, focusing on easy, tasty, healthy recipes which can assist in weightloss. Janice the author really practises what she preaches and has dropped over 2 dress sizes by following this diet and lifestyle plan. She is also based in Lancashire too !

Janice has kindly asked me to review her book and allowed me to publish one of her recipes, but more of that later. The e book is available from www.easytastyclean.com and covers the nutritional background to each of the recipes and features a section on healthy clean ingredients and on healthy cooking techniques. Every recipe is illustrated and the book also features photography by the author and a foreword by her "guru" Nancy Reinhardt.

The book has a great layout and I particularly liked the sections on the more unusual ingredients such as chia seeds, quinoa amongst others and how to prepare them, the word layout on some pages was a bit strange and didn't seem to be justified correctly but that might be my PC. All the recipes look tasty and the recipes cover breakfasts, balanced main meals, savoury snacks and soups, sweet snacks and desserts , and smoothies.

The recipe I chose to test from the book is

Stuffed Walnut Topped Mushrooms

Serves: 2. Prep: 10 mins. Cook: 25 mins.

Ingredients:

4 Portobello mushrooms (large, flat)

300g / 3oz tub low fat, low sodium cottage cheese

1 clove of garlic, minced

1/2 small red bell pepper, finely chopped

1 banana shallot or 2 small regular shallots, finely chopped

Ground black pepper, to taste

10 walnut halves, finely chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 190C / 375F / Gas 5.

Cut off the stalks of the mushrooms then lay them upside down on an oven tray.

In a small bowl, mix together the cottage cheese, garlic, shallot and red pepper.

Spoon the mixture onto the upturned mushrooms, pressing it down slightly and making sure it is pressed into all edges.

Add freshly ground pepper to the surface of the cottage cheese mixture then top with the finely chopped walnuts.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 25 minutes, turning half way through the cooking time. Once the walnuts start to brown the stuffed mushrooms are done.

*You may find that quite a bit of water is released from both the mushrooms and the cottage cheese, this is quite normal and the water can be discarded.

Pre-bake the mushrooms in the oven for 15 minutes and they will release much of their excess water ready for you to use in the recipe as directed.

Here is Janice's picture

and here is mine

I tweaked the recipe slightly as unfortunately Mr Lancashire Food doesn't do nuts, so I substituted a sprinkling of oats to add crunch ( this will affect the protein content of the recipe) and also I added a pinch of dried thyme to the cottage cheese mixture to give a little extra flavour as sometimes cottage cheese can be a little bland especially as I was omitting the nuts. This was a nice snack dish and I served it with steamed homegrown green beans. I am keen also to try some of the other healthy dishes too but as quite a few feature ingredients I don't have in the store cupboard so I will need to visit the health food shop first.

The book would be great to purchase if you were looking to make a serious change of diet and follow Janice's healthy living plan to eat easy, tasty and clean. Check out her website or facebook page for more information.

Monday, 10 September 2012

The weather is definitely turning cooler plus our ever reliable blackberry plant "Loch Ness" in the garden has once again produced a bumper crop of blackberries, so this recipe was created. I love the subtle flavour lavender adds to blackberries a spicy edge and no hint of old ladies handbag. Cobblers for those not in the know are very popular over the pond in America and are a topping for a sweet dessert made out of a soft scone mixture.

This dish fragrances the house whilst it baking creating that loving fug of a homely dessert, cobblers are never the most beautiful dessert but they more than make up for it in flavour stakes, this is a great combination. Perfect served hot with custard or cream, or cold on its own or with yoghurt or creme fraiche. Why not join in the baking fun by plundering your local hedgerows !

Ingredients

Approx 1lb ( 500g) Blackberries

1/2 tsp dried lavender flowers (make sure its an edible variety)

3 tbsp caster sugar

1 tbsp cornflour

Mix all this is one large bowl and then place in your baking dish.

6 oz self raising flour

3 oz butter - soft

125ml plain yoghurt

3oz caster sugar

Mix all this together (preferably in a mixer or food processor) until you a smooth soft sticky mixture, place dollops of this on top of your blackberries , alternatively add a little more flour and use as scone dough and cut cute shapes using a biscuit cutter.

Bake for approx 40 minutes until the cobbler is well risen and golden and blackberry cooked.

I am using this post as my contribution to Simple and in Season this month hosted by Feedingboys

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Myself and a number of other avid cake bakers in the area quickly signed up for the challenge of building an iconic building in PRESTON in cake.

Our chosen building

Preston Cake City is to be built in a victorian square in the city centre as part of the "Square Food Festival" which is in turn part of the Vintage Guild. Preston guild is an ancient merchant guild celebration which dates back from 1179 and is the oldest of its kind in the country. The Guild only occurs once every 20 years , we even have a local saying of "once every Preston guild", meaning something that happens very infrequently.Sue, Carla, Kate, Jo, Hazel and myself have all come together along with some great local sponsors DewlayArtisan FoodworksMick The Egg man BrooksFoodlink Lancashireand my hubby, local design house 6 and 7's to create a pyramid shaped building which resides on the sides of the entrance to the closed dock area of Preston and controls the swingbridge over the entrance.Our creations have been forming for the last month or so, baking and freezing and deciding on cake mixes and tin sizes and how many eggs, how much butter,which flour.Created using vanilla sponges, butter cream and fondant icing and even Blackpool Rock, the creation is taking shape.Its been great fun, but also very stressful, will the building stand up ? what will the weather do on the day ? will it look anything like what is supposed too, how will we transport it ! Ace of Cakes, Cake boss and numerous other TV programmes come to mind.Final touches will be made to the cake on Saturday 1st September, on the same day an edible map of the city is being created by the public and then on Sunday the 2nd , we deliver our cake for public viewing and ultimately consumption by the public !Cake carving of the mid section and the decoration of the base layer where completed on the friday evening, the top section and the mid section were completed on the Saturday along with a dry run of the final assembly, Hubby kindly worked out how to transport and pack the cake for the Sunday delivery. We dropped off the cake at approx 11.30 am and then had to wait patiently whilst the finishing touches went on the map, all completed by about 3pm and then judging was held of the bakers favourite cake and then consumption by the general public. This was like the feeding of the 5000 !!!! Great fun but very tiring ! Fabulous community event and a lovely focus for the Square Food Festival event and a great way to celebrate the city.

In need of some restorative local food and not having the desire to do the cooking, Lancashire Food ventured out on a Monday to find a suitable spot for lunch. Now Monday is the one day of the week when the majority of the more select establishments in the area seem to shut, so this limited choice some what, however we were undeterred and found ourselves in the delightful little hamlet of Bispham Green, just outside the larger village of Mawdesley.

We had been promising ourselves a visit for several years to this establishment but as seems to happen one thing or another gets in the way and you never quite get there, well we should is all I can say as we have been missing out.

On a lovely Lancashire afternoon in early September we discovered the Eagle and Child at Bispham Green , part of the larger foodie Ainscoughs empire , this pub is cutely nestled in the heart of the tiny hamlet of Bispham Green, over looking the village green. Dating from the 18th century the "bird and brat" is a gorgeous looking country pub, rustically furnished but not over done, with flag floors and real fires.

We were welcomed and found a table which overlooked the stunning Lancashire Countryside, we were given 2 menus to peruse, one the standard menu and the other the specials which change fairly regularly as they were still being chalked on the board when we arrived. As this was lunchtime and not being familiar with the portion sizes served, we decided that we would skip the starters delicious as they sounded go straight to the mains and opt for a pudding if we weren't full.

I was pleased to see that the menu featured "Lancashire Hotpot" , despite this being THE iconic Lancashire dish, its a rare dish to find on a pub's menu. Mr Lancashire Food choose this as his dish and I opted for one of the seasonal specials a Chicken, ham and mushroom pie. The pub also has a reputation for fine ales and had a wide selection of different brews from a number of local and regional breweries to sample, a pint of "Golden Sands" from Southport Brewery was ordered.

The friendly front of house staff delivered some fine heavy silver cutlery and then our meals arrived, after a comforting wait ( fairly sure no microwave meals here) , the food arrived a fine looking hotpot with a separate generous dish of red cabbage and my pie, accompanied by rustic chips and seasonal vegetables. My only slight disappointment was that it wasn't a real pie with sides, just a puff pastry top, but the filling more than made up for the lack of pastry, lots and lots of real chicken , hand stripped from the bone, just like your mum's chicken pie made with the roast leftovers, tender ham and juicy earthy mushroom in a creamy white sauce with the delicate hint of freshly cut chives.

The chips chunky homestyle, fluffy and delicious and the vegetables, nothing frozen here, freshly picked broccoli, carrots and runner beans ( wow, seasonal or what !, never had them in a pub before, normally those dinky african things), just like they had been picked from dad's allotment.

Mr LF was impressed with the hotpot , packed with tender meat, well flavoured and a nice crispy potato topping too. All in all the food was of a very good quality and the portion size more than ample, sure its not the cheapest place but I am a great believer in you get what you pay for. We didn't get to try out the dessert menu on this occasion but I am sure we will be back to try it out in the future. Our bill including drinks was a smidgen over £25.

Next door to the pub is the Home Farm shop also part of the same group, as I visited on a Monday it was closed but it definitely warrants a visit another day as it promises local foods, organic local meats from their own farm and locally grown vegetables. I feel another blog post coming on.

The Eagle and Child did not know I was visiting and we paid for our food and drinks, this was our experience of our visit.